A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

provide acceptable ways of understanding the supreme reality or God. He even
sees Judaism as important in this respect. On the other hand, he argues that there
must be limits to toleration and he singles out the Christianity of his day.
Porphyry agrees that Jesus was an important spiritual leader, so important, in
fact, that he, like the Jews, could provide one of the paths to the understanding of
God. However, Christians have erred in making Jesus divine, as in doing so, they
have broken with tradition and have defied the teachings of philosophers,
lawgivers and emperors (and, by implication, Jews) who have established that a
human being cannot be divine. The persecution of Christians is therefore
justified. However, Porphyry does go on to suggest that if Christians could reject
the idea that Jesus was divine then they could be integrated within Roman
tradition and tolerated. In short, he appears to be reluctant to exclude Christians
and would prefer to find a means of including them within an open society. Even
so, Christians were bound to feel angry with this justification for their
persecution, and the Philosophy from Oracles soon provoked a response from a
Christian writer, Lactantius.
Lactantius had been born in North Africa around 250, and some time before
his conversion to Christianity had been appointed by the emperor Diocletian as a
teacher of rhetoric in the important imperial city of Nicomedia. He had then
converted, and had lost his post during Diocletian’s persecution of Christians in
303. The experience of persecution made Lactantius determined to refute
Porphyry and show that Christianity deserved to be offered toleration. Lactantius
was remarkable in that he did not deny toleration to other religions, and his
Divine Institutes (c.308—309) provides a Christian rationale for the toleration of
all religious beliefs.
As someone who had been brought up with a traditional Roman education,
Lactantius knew his classical authors, and he cites the Roman orator and
statesman Cicero for his view that one should approach the gods with piety but
that it must be for God/the gods, not human beings, to decide the nature of
appropriate worship. Lactantius goes on to argue that to use force to impose
religious belief pollutes the very nature of religion. God values devotion, faith
and love, and an act of force contradicts exactly what He most requires; in fact,
it diminishes the deity in whose name persecution is effected. Those who
persecuted Christians had actually discredited their own gods by doing so. He
makes another point, which reappears in later writers, that belief imposed from
outside is meaningless to God, who places greater value on conviction from
within. On the other hand, it is justified to use reasoned argument to persuade